Alive Inside

She cannot answer the question, “What was life like when you were young?” It was too long ago; she is confused and appears disoriented. Suddenly, Dan Cohen, a social worker specializing in geriatric care, puts a pair of headphones on her ears. We faintly hear some gospel music, the kind of music our female subject identified with in her teens and ‘20s. All of a sudden, her eyes light up and widen, she sits up straighter, and starts to rattle off names and dates from the past; all this from a woman who just two minutes ago could not give the simplest answer. This moment of enlightenment is what Alive Inside is all about. Patient after patient perk up out of nowhere and speak in complete sentences merely by listening to some tunes they used to listen to when they were young. How long they retain their regained memories or if there is some sort of law of diminishing returns on the amount of times the music method jogs them back to reality is not covered.

Cohen founded the non-profit organization Music & Memory devoted to donating $40 iPods to nursing homes. The music man has few kind words for the pill and nursing home industry. A doctor may prescribe any number of pills each costing thousands of dollars but prescribe music? That is not in the budget. Scientists can fine tune blood sugar and blood pressure, but there is no pill that can match what 10 seconds of a golden oldie does to an Alzheimer’s patient.

Director Michael Rossatto-Bennett said he only planned to film Cohen for one day and ended up spending three years following him roam from nursing home to nursing home trying to convince care givers of music therapy benfits. The headphones and iPods are cheap, they mentally propel those with fading minds upwards out of their fog, and for many, it is an extremely emotional experience. More than a couple elderly patients on screen end up in tears because they are so happy to regain their sense of self.

Various experts and music therapy proponents pop up as well including Oliver Sacks, the renowned neurologist and best-selling author of Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain and singer Bobby McFerrin who you may remember from 25 years ago singing “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.” Dr. Sacks has already put into words the science behind what music does to our brains and McFerrin is attached as a celebrity backer of the Music & Memory idea. He recognizes the universality of music is no fluke.

Alive Inside won the Audience Award for Best Documentary at this year’s Sundance Film Festival; no small feat. It won because it makes you feel good. The soundtrack playing in the background as people remember who they are and where they come from is powerful. Rossato-Bennett falters a bit toward the end as he hypes his own online video, which went viral through reddit and YouTube. We applaud the notoriety this gave Music & Memory, but it comes across more self-congratulatory.

Rossato-Bennett also employs some visual trickery on old, nostalgic pictures he shows of some of Cohen’s patients. The kids in the picture will move their heads and face toward the camera. How necessary this move is in a medical documentary is debatable, but it takes nothing away from the subject or momentum; it does not add anything to it either. Alive Inside works best when Cohen is one on one with a patient about to regain their memory. When it switches tracks to comment on and criticize public and social policy, of which there is plenty to criticize, it feels more like an Op/Ed and loses its magic for awhile until we arrive at another patient. As the baby boomer generation continues to age and swells the numbers in the already over-stretched nursing homes, ideas like Music & Memory are going to gain a lot more attention. Don’t forget to load up your iPod before you move on the final phase of your life. It looks like it will much harder to obtain than your next bottle of pills.